What No One Tells You About Parenting: Regulating Your Child Means Learning to Regulate Yourself First
- Ilana Lawrence
- May 28
- 3 min read
You snuggle your newborn and your heart bursts with joy. When you look into their eyes and see their beautiful little face, it is hard to imagine ever feeling angry, frustrated, or overstimulated by them.
Then they become toddlers.
They still have those chubby little hands and feet, and somehow always have something sticky on their face, but they also begin discovering independence, big emotions, and boundaries.
Suddenly that precious newborn is now 2 years old laying in the middle of Woolworths kicking and screaming because you will not buy them a tub of ice cream. Or you are football carrying them down the street while they scream because you will not let them run onto the road.
To us as adults, these decisions feel completely reasonable.
To a toddler whose brain is wired for curiosity, emotion, impulsivity, and very little regulation yet? Completely unreasonable.
And in those moments, your nervous system activates too.
You are trying to hold a boundary to keep your child safe and healthy while also managing the pressure of other people watching. You can feel the eyes on you. The expectations. The pressure to appear calm, in control, and like you somehow have all the answers.
Your stress response kicks in and suddenly all you want is for the moment to end as quickly as possible.
This is where co-regulation comes in.
But in order to co-regulate with your child, you first need to understand how to regulate yourself.
What Is Co-Regulation?
Co-regulation is the process of helping a child manage their emotions through connection, safety, and calm support.
Children are not born knowing how to regulate emotions. Their nervous systems are still developing, which means they borrow regulation from the adults around them.
This does not mean you need to be perfectly calm all the time. That is impossible.
It means becoming aware of what is happening inside your own body first.
Understanding Your Stress Response as a Parent
Every person has an automatic nervous system response when something feels stressful, threatening, overstimulating, or overwhelming.
These responses are commonly known as:
Fight
Flight
Freeze
Fawn
Think about the public toddler tantrum in Woolworths for a second.
What would your body naturally want to do?
Would you:
Yell at your child? Fight.
Grab them and leave as quickly as possible? Flight.
Feel completely overwhelmed and shut down? Freeze.
Hand over the ice cream just to make it stop? Fawn.
None of these responses make you a bad parent.
They are automatic survival responses designed to protect you.
Thousands of years ago, these responses helped humans survive danger. The problem is that your nervous system often cannot tell the difference between being chased by a lion and being publicly humiliated by a screaming toddler in aisle 6.
Why Emotional Regulation Matters in Parenting
Children learn emotional regulation through connection, not fear.
When we respond to children with calmness, safety, and consistency, their nervous systems slowly learn:
Emotions are manageable
Hard feelings are safe
Boundaries can exist alongside connection
They do not need to fear emotions
This does not mean permissive parenting. Boundaries still matter. Safety still matters.
But emotional regulation develops through supported experiences, not shame or punishment alone.
What Co-Regulation Actually Looks Like
Co-regulation is often much simpler than social media makes it seem.
It can look like:
Taking one slow breath before responding
Softening your tone instead of raising it
Getting down to your child’s eye level
Reminding yourself “my child is having a hard time, not giving me a hard time”
Staying physically close while holding a boundary
Regulating your own body first
These small moments matter far more than perfection.
Parenting and Nervous System Overload
The truth is parenting often activates parts of ourselves we did not even realise needed support.
The overstimulation. The frustration. The guilt. The pressure.The sensory overload.The constant demands.
It all makes more sense when you understand the nervous system.
Learning to regulate yourself does not mean you will never lose your patience.
It means:
Noticing what is happening in your body
Becoming aware of your triggers
Repairing after hard moments
Showing your child that emotions are human and manageable
Because emotional safety is not built through perfection.
It is built through connection, repair, and consistency over time.
The First Step to Regulating Your Child
The first step to regulating your child was never controlling them.
It was learning how to support yourself first.
If parenting feels overwhelming, overstimulating, emotionally exhausting, or triggering old patterns within yourself, you are not failing.
You are human.
And support matters.
If you are wanting support around parenting, emotional regulation, nervous system health, matrescence, or family wellbeing, book in to see Tash Moran.
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